Ricciardo qualifies 6th for Bahrain GP

In the best performance of his brief Formula One career, 22-year-old West Australian Daniel Ricciardo has qualified a brilliant sixth for the Bahrain Grand Prix and will start Sunday's race alongside the winner of last weekend's Chinese GP, Nico Rosberg.

World champion Sebastian Vettel has pole position for the first time this season for Red Bull Racing, edging McLaren's Lewis Hamilton to the other side of the front row of the grid.

Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber will start third, with Jenson Button (McLaren), the winner of last month's Australian GP, next to him on the second row.

Ricciardo lapped the Sakhir circuit in his Ferrari-engined Toro Rosso car less than 0.1 second slower than the Mercedes of Rosberg and within 0.5 seconds of top qualifier Vettel.

While the Perth driver will have three world champions ahead of him, three other world champions will start behind him - Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) in ninth, Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus-Renault) 11th and Michael Schumacher (Mercedes) 18th.

Ricciardo's Toro Rosso teammate Jean-Eric Vergne was eliminated in the first of the three sections of qualifying, with the 19th fastest time of the 24 drivers and more than 2 seconds slower than Ricciardo's best qualifying lap.

He put the performance down to persistence with the updates for the car that didn't work as well in China last weekend.

"We persisted with them and we made them work significantly better here, which is down to the hard work of the whole team," Ricciardo said.

"I was happy with my driving and I got better ," and better in each of the sessions.

"It's not always you have a day like this, so I can enjoy the moment, bearing in mind that it's tomorrow (Sunday) that counts.

"Now we have to put it all together for the race and tonight we will be looking at all our strategy options regarding tyres.

"It helps to go into a race feeling confidence and starting from sixth.